Doctor Who and Philosophy

by Courtland Lewis

  The Doctor’s morals and guidance often influence the actions of the people involved, but sometimes they act without, or against, his advice, choosing to opt for the choice anyone would make in their situation, the choice they believe is the ‘best’, or most ‘moral.’ Although the Doctor had Prime Minister Harriet Jones deposed after she ordered the destruction of the Sycorax ship in “The Christmas Invasion” (2005), she explains her actions in “Journey’s End”: “But I stand by my actions to this day, because I knew—I knew that one day, the Earth would be in danger and the Doctor would fail to appear. I told him so myself, and he didn’t listen.”

  Martha Jones and Sarah Jane Smith threaten the Daleks with the Osterhagen Key and the Warp Star respectively in “Journey’s End.” Outside of Doctor Who’s main series, Captain Jack and Sarah Jane Smith lead their teams according to (most of the time!) their new moral values caused by rising above one’s self in Torchwood and The Sarah Jane Adventures, without recourse to the Doctor. One of the most striking examples of a character rising above human nature to become something of an ‘Übermensch’ is the Hostess in “Midnight” (2008), who sacrifices herself to remove the alien threat, and also to diffuse the angry, unreasonable, mob mentality of the other passengers.

  There’s even the suggestion in some episodes that to be human might be preferable, or at least more honorable, to being a Time Lord. For example, in “The Next Doctor” (2008), Jackson Lake was revealed to be even more courageous as himself, a man, than when he was under the impression he was the Doctor. When the Doctor’s human guise ‘John Smith’ chooses to return to his Time Lord self in “The Family of Blood,” his former love, Joan, points out: “He was braver than you, in the end. That ordinary man. You chose to change. He chose to die.” In “Utopia” (2007), we also see that the human Professor Yana was a far more admirable character in that human guise than in his true form of the Master.

  Perhaps the most noble human of all—and given her surname, that’s not surprising—is Donna. It’s Donna who continually challenges the Doctor’s ethics, who’s not afraid to tell him he’s wrong, and who reminds him and the rest of the universe that humans are just as special as Time Lords:DONNA: What, and you’re in charge?

  TENTH DOCTOR: TARDIS, Time Lord ... yeah.

  DONNA: Donna, human ... no! I don’t need your permission. (“The Fires of Pompeii,” 2008)

  Also: I’m a Human Being. Maybe not the stuff of legend, but every bit as important as Time Lords, thank you. (Donna to the Shadow Architect, “The Stolen Earth,” 2008)

  In “Turn Left” (2008), Donna is described by Rose as “the most important woman in all of creation.” Even though Donna herself often fails to see that she’s special, around the world there are people “singing songs of Donna Noble” (“Journey’s End”) because of what she’s done for them. And though most characters are changed only through meeting the Doctor, in “Turn Left,” a version of Donna who’s never met him is the one who changes everything and saves the universe.

  When Donna and the New Doctor experience a ‘biological metacrisis’ and each become part-human, part-Time Lord, it’s the human aspect Donna brings that helps the Doctor, as the ‘threefold man’ (Donna, the New Doctor, the Doctor—and there’s an obvious allegory here with the Christian Trinity of Father, Son and Holy Spirit!), to save the day:Because you two were just Time Lords! You dumbos. Lacking that little bit of human, that gut instinct that goes hand-in-hand with planet Earth. I could think of ideas that you two couldn’t dream of in a million years! Ah, the universe has been waiting for me! (“Journey’s End”)

  However, humanity in the Doctor Who universe is only wonderful if it remains human. Once humans take on characteristics of something ‘other’ or more powerful, this can’t—and doesn’t—continue. For example, when Professor Lazarus experiments with changing his biology (“The Lazarus Experiment”), and when Sky Sylvestry (“Midnight”), Korwin (“42,” 2007), Gwyneth (“The Unquiet Dead,” 2005), and Toby (“The Satan Pit”) are possessed by something sinister, it leads to their deaths.

  In “The Parting of The Ways,” Rose absorbs the ‘Time Vortex’ from the heart of the TARDIS and begins to see as if she were a god. The power is too much for her and almost kills her. The Doctor saves her by taking the power into his body, which causes his regeneration from the Ninth to the Tenth incarnation. He explains that “No one was ever meant to have that power. If a Time Lord did that, he’d become a god, a vengeful god. But she was human.”

  Similarly, when Donna becomes part-human, part-Time Lord in “Journey’s End,” her brain begins to malfunction. She and the Doctor realize she will die unless he wipes her memory of him and all Time Lord-knowledge. Donna pleads with him to let her die instead of sending her back to her old life, but the Doctor, who knows that all humans have the potential to be amazing, even without knowing him (we see Donna fulfilling this potential in “Turn Left”), chooses to save her life by wiping her mind and restoring her to her human self.

  I Thought It Was Just the Doctor that We Needed, but It’s Both of You

  There’s an ambiguity at work in Doctor Who. On the one hand, there’s the message that ordinary people can become extraordinary and fulfill great potential—much like Nietzsche’s concept of the Übermensch. We’re shown that ‘gods’ may be powerful, but that power can easily be abused and also comes at great cost. On the other hand, we’re clearly shown that the universe needs the Doctor. The apocalyptic events of “The Last of the Time Lords” and “Turn Left” make it clear that without him, the world would suffer from dictatorships, explosions, terrorism, poverty, alien invasion, and a lot of unnecessary deaths.

  Perhaps, then, the way the Doctor is characterized shows us that while the universe needs some kind of a savior, that savior needs to be challenged and questioned. Although some of our ideals are projected onto the Doctor as a savior or redeemer, in much the same way that Feuerbach claimed humanity projected its morals onto the figure of Christ, he’s by no means a perfect Messiah. His power, unchallenged, can become dangerous, and he still has many weaknesses of his own to overcome. In the spirit of Nietzsche, he’s more often portrayed as a flawed being with the potential to overcome himself. In this sense, perhaps he’s morally more of an equal to the ‘ordinary’ human and alien characters as they try to rise above themselves, too. This ‘lonely god’ helps people overcome their weaknesses and trials, but likewise, his companions and allies do the same for him. The Doctor and ordinary people seem to have a symbiotic relationship—they need each other. It’s only when the Doctor and his allies overcome their weaknesses, together, that the universe is saved.

  22

  Overcoming Evil, and Spite, and Resentment, and Revenge

  ADAM RIGGIO

  “Utopia” (2007) began the three-episode story that ended Series Three of Doctor Who; in this story the Doctor and his companions find themselves at the end of the universe, trillions of years in the future when the few remaining stars are dying or dead. Looking into the sky from the barren rocks of the near-lifeless planet Malcassario, they see only blackness, but they soon discover one last outpost of life: a scraggly colony of humans led by kindly old Professor Yana, who’ve cobbled together a rocketship to take them to Utopia, a signal in space that offers their last hope for life. Yet in the last moments of the episode, Yana recovers his lost memory, and is restored to his life as a Time Lord—the Master—whose first act is the terrifying murder of his most faithful companion, Chantho. Stealing the TARDIS, he returns to contemporary Earth, and over the final two episodes of the season lays waste to the planet. The Master has no love for the world, and loves only its destruction.

  Time Lord, All-Too-Time Lord

  The work of Friedrich Nietzsche calls into question whether there’s any value at all to be found in existence itself, and if there’s any point to living in a valueless universe, the question at the heart of the battle between the Doctor and the Master.

  Nietzsche himself has had almost a
s many incarnations as the average Time Lord, both during his life and after its end. Early in his career, Nietzsche was a brilliant and promising professor of Greek language and culture, earning his doctorate at age twenty-one. Chronic illness forced him out of teaching, taking a pension from the university as he traveled throughout Europe growing increasingly reclusive and sick. His writings, which date from this nomadic period of his life, weren’t financially successful, but gained Nietzsche fame for pushing German philosophy and the German language itself into creative and strange new directions. In 1889, Nietzsche collapsed on a street in Turin, after running to the defense of a horse that was being mercilessly whipped. He remained conscious, yet vegetative, until his death in 1900. During his last years and after his death, his works were unfaithfully edited by his sister, Elizabeth Förster-Nietzsche, to reflect their nationalist and anti-Semitic political and social views. These versions of his work would later inform the philosophy of the Nazi party. This appropriation would’ve appalled Nietzsche, given his respect for Jewish culture and his disdain for German nationalism, which is evident from the original versions of his work, as well as his conversations with his few friends when he was functional. Another incarnation of Nietzsche was his inspiration for Martin Heidegger’s lifelong project of moving philosophy beyond metaphysics, Heidegger calling him “the last metaphysical thinker.” However, later scholars of Nietzsche’s work, most notably Walter Kaufmann and Gilles Deleuze, would disagree that Nietzsche could find such an easy slot in Heidegger’s project.

  Deleuze’s Nietzsche, described in incredible detail in his second published book, Nietzsche and Philosophy, is most faithful to the German’s original intent, and also lets one build a deeper understanding of the Doctor himself in his highest nobility, as he who continually fights the base instincts of life, he who refuses to be dragged into despair, he who can stare into the abyss at the end of everything and overflow with laughter and celebration.

  Regarding this aspect of the Doctor, his greatest challenge is the Master as played by John Simm, who is in his element at the end of the universe, a time and place of profound emptiness, the empty sky when all the stars have burned out and blown away into scattered waves of atomic dust. What better place to discover the ends of the universe than at the end of the universe? If there’s some higher purpose to life and existence, then surely it must be revealed in its final moments, a grand summation of history itself. Yet it all comes to nothing but the cold, darkness, and emptiness. It’s all pretty weighty stuff for a Saturday evening sci-fi adventure show.

  Among Nietzsche’s central investigations is the nature of our ultimate justifications of existence, to catalogue what kind of answers people typically expect to questions like ‘Why are we here?’ ‘What is the meaning of existence?’ and so on. After an analysis of Western culture that included among his research the philosophies of Hebrew priests, Saint Paul, Arthur Schopenhauer, and all of European history up to the 1880s, Nietzsche delcared that most people expect the ultimate meaning of the universe to come from a source outside the universe. He often referred to this transcendent source of meaning as God, but this ‘God’ encompassed the deities of many religions. All that mattered for Nietzsche’s point was that the value of the universe, the justification for existence, the reason anyone has for even being alive, can only come from some source larger than life. No living being had the right to justify itself, because justification could only come from that which is beyond life: the final judgment, the word of God. Nietzsche called this nihilism, because according to nihilist philosophies, life itself is seen as inadequate to give meaning to itself. Not having ultimate power is just as good as having no power at all.103

  It may seem strange to call Simm’s Master a man deeply affected by his need to believe in a god, as he often speaks of his desire to become a god himself. In the second episode of his story, “The Sound of Drums” (2007), the Master, on the phone with the Doctor, asks with a deep envy what it felt like to be responsible for the destruction of two mighty civilizations, the Time Lords’ and the Daleks’, in the final battle of the Time War, saying that it must’ve felt like being God. But we can also call the Master a pessimist in a peculiar Nietzschean sense. He’s been to the end of the universe and seen it limping to a dark, silent death. The conclusions he draws from the pathetic end of existence are spelled out in the following pieces of dialogue in “The Last of the Time Lords” (2007), spoken by the Master, Lucy Saxon, and a captured Toclafane orb, the psychotic cyborgs who are the last remnants of humanity in the dying days of the universe.

  MASTER: I took Lucy to Utopia. A Time Lord and his human companion. I took her to see the stars. Isn’t that right, sweet-heart?

  LUCY SAXON: Trillions of years into the future, to the end of the universe.... Dying. Everything dying. The whole of creation was falling apart. And I thought; there’s no point. No point to anything, ever.

  TOCLAFANE: There was no solution, no diamonds. Just the dark and the cold.

  MASTER: All the human invention that had carried them across the stars. They turned inward. They cannibalized themselves ... But it didn’t work. The universe was collapsing all around them.

  He understands that there’s no higher being or purpose for the universe other than the existence and eventual death of the universe itself, and so judges the universe to be empty of any value. If the true value of life must be based in some purpose of life higher than life itself, then the fact that there’s no such higher purpose means that any value at all for life disappears entirely. The premise of nihilism is, that to be meaningful, one must be founded in that which is superior to life, beyond the everyday order of the living (Deleuze, p. 147). Life itself ends with the end of the universe, with no higher mission, meaning, or value than that which was in life itself.

  The foundation of the Master’s pessimism is that he believes the universe can only be ultimately meaningful if there’s some value superior to life that grounds our mere existence. In this way, the Master still looks for higher values beyond life, even while he can’t find it, and doesn’t expect to find it. If the denial of anything superior to life necessarily denies the value of life itself, then at the very core of this philosophy is the depreciation of life itself. All his actions articulate many of the different aspects of the nihilist that Nietzsche describes, all of which flows from the nihilist’s depreciation of life as that which can have no value on its own. The Master hates life, because with no higher purpose, it’s valueless. He has decided that life is worthless.

  Resentment Consumes the Master

  Nietzsche himself described several articulations of the nihilist way of thinking, and organized them all on a scale of evolution from the simple strong person through to the Overman, the one who defeats nihilism by overcoming it. A person’s simple strength is their ability to create, and affirm that which they created. This is the active force of a living person.

  Deleuze quotes from Nietzsche’s notebooks: “Every body extends its power as far as it is able,” and some bodies are more able than others. Not every body is equal, and in a head-to-head contest, the stronger force will always defeat the weaker. Strength itself won’t fail through being conquered by a superior force, because this would only be one person defeated by another, stronger person. For this type of person, the simplest form of self-conscious life, life is a struggle, and the victor in the struggle becomes the Master of those he’s conquered through his strength. Nietzsche calls this ‘master morality’ (not to be confused with the Master’s morality), the one who says, “I am good, and you whom I’ve defeated are not quite as good as me.” This is a force that affirms its own active creative power, and all its actions and judgments are based on this initial affirmation.

  But this kind of strength is simple, a force that expressed itself honestly and openly. The strong force doesn’t even conceive of cunning and guile, because it has no need of them. The strong force flexes its muscles in victory, and smiles the vacant grin of the jock showing
off his trophy from the arm wrestling contest. The weak forces are identified by the strong force having defeated them. The weak is the one who develops guile, subterfuge, secrecy, and deceit. It’s a testament to Nietzsche’s black sense of humor that the weak, slavish forces are actually superior to the strong. With these methods, the weak becomes superior to the strong, and Nietzsche does consider weak forces to be superior to simple strong ones because they can develop talents of manipulation and scheming against which the rippling biceps of simple strength are useless.

  After its defeat, the weak force whispers into the ear of the strong, like some priestly Iago, “You have defeated me, which makes you evil. Since evil opposes me, I am good.” The weak force is priestly, says Nietzsche, because like a priest, its goal is to convince everyone to whom it speaks that what it says is the absolute, unchanging truth. The strong force is honest, with no conception of lying or scheming, so it believes the accusations of the weak force. The strong are defeated when they blame themselves for their own strength, and once that seed of self-doubt is implanted, it can’t be forgotten.

  The weak force doesn’t affirm itself, but only defines itself in its relation to another, which it denounces and comes to hate. This is the kernel of what Nietzsche calls ressentiment, a French word meaning ‘resentment’ in English, but which Nietzsche, writing in German, chose for the subtleties of the word in the French language. This resentment is the key feature of nihilism: blaming others for your weakness and making the strong understand their strength as wrong, sinful.104 In Nietzsche’s picture of humanity, once resentment evolves, it infests all activity. So while one first resents the force that conquered you, eventually everyone resents everyone else.